It was not an easy decision P.J. Hairston faced as he considered whether to turn professional following his sophomore season at North Carolina. The same sort of decision led Oklahoma State star Marcus Smart to tears; it led Marquette’s Vander Blue to a painfully quiet draft night a few months later.

By early April, though, after talking with his family and coach Roy Williams and doubtless many others with opinions on the subject, Hairston had come to terms with the idea that he probably would find himself in a better draft position a year down the road.

He issued a statement April 12: “I value the experiences I have had over the past two years in Chapel Hill and hope to continue to grow under Coach Roy’s guidance.”

Hairston has done a lot of dumb things since, collecting traffic tickets and a marijuana possession charge while in possession of rental cars that were arranged by—and whose accounts were settled by—others.

But the dumbest thing of all is to bother returning to college if not to spend the year wisely trying to advance his position in the NBA draft.

Even if he’s getting free car rentals, Hairston would figure to do better economically at this stage even by failing to make the NBA. There’s the D-League. There’s Europe. He wouldn’t have trouble getting a job in professional basketball at this stage of his development.

This is something we encounter too often from college basketball players with marginal potential to compete in the highest league: They hide from responsibility by choosing not to turn professional, and then it’s the college game’s fault when they fail to develop into serious draft prospects.

N.C. State’s C.J. Leslie is another ideal example. Any reporter who went through Raleigh last autumn was promised by Leslie that his return to the Pack signaled a new maturity for him. “If you bring it in practice every day, you build a consistency,” Leslie told Brett Freidlander of StarNewsOnline. “Basically it’s building a habit and staying with it.”

Leslie stayed true to his basketball habits through the 2012-13 season. There’s little doubt about that. His longstanding habit of turning his effort level up and down as it suited him held true all the way to March, when N.C. State was throttled in the early stages of a Round of 64 NCAA Tournament game against Temple and fell so far behind even a furious rally could not erase the deficit.

In a key late game at Florida State as the Pack battled for an NCAA bid, Leslie was 2-of-5 from the floor, scored 5 points and played only 18 minutes. State lost by four points. In his final trip to play at rival North Carolina, he scored 6 points and committed 6 turnovers.

This week, he answered criticism such as this, which appeared to be the reason Leslie fell entirely out of the draft, by telling the New York Post, “Every game I was supposed to show up in, I showed up in.”

Obviously Hairston’s issues fall into an entirely different classification. But at the core it’s the same problem: an unwillingness to take this whole enterprise seriously.

Hairston was not circumspect enough to drive under the posted speed limit when driving a car that had been rented by another person in May. Before another month had passed, undaunted by the possibility that showing up on a police report might eventually lead to discovery of the circumstances of his transportation, he was stopped again at a checkpoint and this time was charged with possession of marijuana.

According to a police report obtained by the Raleigh News & Observer, Hairston told officers he is a “recreational smoker” of marijuana. “Mr. Hairston stated that he does not smoke marijuana to get high, but he will take a hit or two occasionally.”

Wait, what?

Certainly athletes can use the college game properly. Indiana’s Cody Zeller is an ideal example. Or Duke’s Mason Plumlee or Michigan’s Tim Hardaway. Each spent an “extra” year in college and was the better for it, because each took seriously the process of developing as an athlete.

Many believed Zeller risked being selected lower in the draft by playing his sophomore season. He became the No. 4 overall pick. Hardaway struggled as a sophomore after a stellar freshman season; he dedicated himself to improvement, increased his 3-point percentage from 28.3 to 37.4 and helped advance the Wolverines to the NCAA championship game. He left zero doubt he was a professional in every way a basketball player can be, except in the sense he had yet to be paid to play the game.

It’s never as easy for a coach to turn away from a player in whom he has invested a great deal of time and trust as it is for someone in the media or someone posting an online opinion to suggest this should happen. "Get rid of him," right?

Williams might not have a choice, depending on how the NCAA comes to view the provision of the rental car and the person, Fats Thomas, that Hairston admitted to police gave him use of the car.

It certainly does not feel worthy of all the angst, though. The impression Hairston presents with his actions is that basketball in general—and college basketball in particular—does not matter to him all that much.